MLK project grant more seed money

Published: Friday, September 28, 2012 at 05:26 PM.

The MLK corridor appears as hungry for investment as Mitchelltown or any city neighborhood, but a least likely to get it from private sources without the encouragement of public investment.

A survey of 596 properties along the corridor done by University of North Carolina students and staff of the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise — a group that has worked with the city on revitalization plans for the area since the project’s inception — recorded a description of blight: 74 percent of the standing structures in poor condition, 25 percent of the properties vacant lots.

Couple the condition of the properties with the fact that 77 percent of the occupied structures are rentals and the incentive for investment declines further.

Clearing out the blight and improving the boulevard itself, a related $1.04 million project that includes sidewalks and lighting and put a roundabout at King Street and Park Avenue, will with any luck open investors’ eyes to the potential of a neighborhood near downtown astride a primary thoroughfare.

The most significant, eye-catching improvements along Queen Street and Herritage Street owe their existence to people who put their own, not the public’s, money on the line. It works the same way with residential neighborhoods.

That question had to be on the minds of the Kinston City Council and the city’s staff as they decided where to aim potential grant money at the ocean of residential blight and dilapidated properties lapping up against the city’s central business district.

Bolstered by a $100,000 Community Development Block Grant announced Thursday, they will begin where they’ve already started, on the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard corridor, a target of city revitalization efforts — and public money from federal, state and local sources — since 2009.

The money is to go toward knocking down and cleaning up some of the scores of properties already tagged for demolition; at about $6,000 a property, the grant will pay to raze about half of them. The goal is to create a more appealing neighborhood along a well-traveled street — the route that links Kinston and Greenville — in hopes of leaving a better first impression.

If that strategy appears to put appearance above substance, to place a higher priority on an area that visitors will see than on more out-of-the-way areas of Kinston equally in need, it does — but with a smart ulterior motive.

City officials have dozens of reasons to want to commit funds to blighted neighborhoods; one of the best, though, is pump priming, creating a physical environment and neighborhood ambiance that encourages private investment in both commercial and residential property.

That principle is at work in Mitchelltown, Kinston’s premiere neighborhood before decades of decline left it frayed. That neighborhood, like the MLK corridor, has a high number of properties ready for the wrecking ball, but it also has a better rate of owner-occupied residences and a track record of private restoration. Helped by tax credits and other incentives for revitalization, Mitchelltown is attracting private money both from people who want to live there and people who want to invest there.

The MLK corridor appears as hungry for investment as Mitchelltown or any city neighborhood, but a least likely to get it from private sources without the encouragement of public investment.

A survey of 596 properties along the corridor done by University of North Carolina students and staff of the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise — a group that has worked with the city on revitalization plans for the area since the project’s inception — recorded a description of blight: 74 percent of the standing structures in poor condition, 25 percent of the properties vacant lots.

Couple the condition of the properties with the fact that 77 percent of the occupied structures are rentals and the incentive for investment declines further.

Clearing out the blight and improving the boulevard itself, a related $1.04 million project that includes sidewalks and lighting and put a roundabout at King Street and Park Avenue, will with any luck open investors’ eyes to the potential of a neighborhood near downtown astride a primary thoroughfare.

The most significant, eye-catching improvements along Queen Street and Herritage Street owe their existence to people who put their own, not the public’s, money on the line. It works the same way with residential neighborhoods.